plus an expert interview with Justin Wu of CoinCircle

On this episode of ICO Insight, TopiaCoin is in this week's ICO Spotlight. TopiaCoin describes itself as the first secure network for sharing your digital assets. Janine Terrano, CEO of TopiaCoin, shares details on the upcoming ICO. Also, an expert interview with Justin Wu of CoinCircle. He discusses the importance of Telegram, marketing and PR when it comes to launching an ICO. Plus, the latest on the U.S. Senate hearing into virtual currencies in your ICO and crypto investing news.

Interviews

Justin Wu, Head of Growth, CoinCircle

I'm a growth marketer & Information Architecture. Currently am the Head of growth for CoinCircle. I run all things growth, internal products & create crypto content. In terms of growth, I've helped brands achieve over $3m in Kickstarter, 500k downloads in the app store and taken SaaS companies to over $100k MRR / $1MM ARR. In parallel to all my work, I'm also a content creator in the growth marketing space. I've collaborated with the Wall St Journal, CES, NASA, NASDAQ & been sponsored by Samsung, Intel, New Balance.

Janine Terrano, CEO, TopiaCoin

Janine Terrano has extensive business leadership expertise and experience building companies in the technology sector. Ms. Terrano founded Business Internet Services in 1996 and grew the organization to serve the web application development needs of large commercial and government clients. In 1999, Ms. Terrano launched Topia Technology, Inc. Topia&rsquo;s patented solutions securely manage the movement of data between disparate platforms, components and devices, allowing commercial and government clients to connect new technologies to complex legacy systems.

TopiaCoin Transcript

Amy Wan:

Now it's time for this week's ICO spotlight. This is where we'll introduce you to a company that's planning to launch or has launched an ICO.

Adam Chapnick:

TopiaCoin is in this week's ICO spotlight. TopiaCoin will be having a public ICO sale for accredited investors starting in March. The company touts itself as the first secure network for sharing your digital assets. Before we introduce you to the company's CEO, let's learn a little more about TopiaCoin.

Announcer:

Topia is an established company that has been solving complex problems for the U.S. Army, Air Force, and TSA for the last decade. With every solution, Topia ensure the highest level of security and privacy of data, while meeting and exceeding performance metrics. Most recently, Topia is leveraging its technology and expertise to bring that same unmatched security and performance to large enterprises across industry sectors, including healthcare, legal, finance, technology, logistics, and aerospace. Topia's patented enterprise security platform, Secrata, secures private data shared within a network and beyond, regardless of the devices being used. Secrata's battle-tested security uses a patented method to split the file or digital asset into a series of chunks, each with unique encryption keys.

Those keys are then encrypted using a workspace key. The workspace key is also encrypted with a public encryption key of each authorized member of the workspace. When the file arrives at its destination, the recipients private key is used to decrypt the workspace key, which then decrypts the key for each file chunk. These chunks are decrypted, reassembled, and the file is available to use. Now, Topia has combined its highest level security expertise with emerging digital ledger technology to create secure decentralized file sharing infrastructure, or SDFS. SDFS enables anyone from any device to easily and securely share digital assets with specific recipients. Users can have the highest level of security, privacy, and confidence in knowing that neither their data, nor their activity can be exploited by a central authority.

Decentralization also helps guard against massive and vicious attacks, like those that struck Equifax. Users own their encryption keys and data is never exposed from the point of origin to the point of destination. The digital ledger allows for complete transparency of your asset's activity and can be monitored and shared without any centralized authority, while supporting a network comprised of specific participants. Imagine submitting your tax returns or sharing financial documentation, wills, or any files containing sensitive personal information, in a truly secure and private manner. Having the full confidence that the right recipient and only that recipient will be able to access them on your terms, will now be a reality.

To drive the ecosystem surrounding SDFS, Topia technology is introducing TopiaCoin, a new cryptocurrency token. TopiaCoin can be used to purchase the creation of new workspaces, pay workspace members for data replication, and buy third-parties as a currency for transactions with their clients. These uses will help drive the circulation of TopiaCoin and create a vibrant economy surrounding SDFS. Topia's robust application programming interface, API, and libraries will ensure third-party solution providers can more efficiently develop services by leveraging Topia's secure infrastructure. These tools include methods to connect the blockchain to any digital asset, leverage TopiaCoin to facilitate secure transactions, shred and encrypt each file, including all key management and APIs for all clients, desktop, mobile, and web, all out of the box.

Much like an app store does for mobile device owners, Topia will deliver the tools, publication, and distribution, enabling third-party developers interested in tapping into this technology to reach customers quickly. Topia will be the first to market with the powerful capabilities of this secure decentralized file sharing infrastructure. Topia will unveil SDFS Alpha in the fourth quarter of 2018, followed shortly with its API and libraries, and the final release is expected in the second quarter of 2019. Topia technology, bringing unmatched security to decentralized systems.

Amy Wan:

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with the CEO of TopiaCoin, Janine Terrano. She provided a clear picture of TopiaCoin's ICO and why they decided on a public sale for accredited investors. Take a look.

It's so great to have you on the show. First, tell me a little bit about TopiaCoin. What is the specific problem that you're trying to solve?

Janine Terrano:

Well, Topia's been around for well over a decade and our focus has been data security. We've operated in systems that have central authorities and currently we have a product by the name of Secrata, which is an enterprise data security platform. This platform can easily be deployed on any third-party cloud infrastructure provider or on premise. What we looked at is how can we harden our security and how can we further protect data regardless of how it is moved and managed. With the development of blockchain, we are now able to bring this new level of security to decentralized systems. Imagine, if you will, if you could send a digital asset, whether it's a document or a medical record, from point A to point B without the need of any centralist authority and still have this unmatched data security. That's exactly what TopiaCoin is doing.

Amy Wan:

Very interesting. What made you decide on doing an ICO?

Janine Terrano:

Great question. We are committed to creating a community, and an economy around TopiaCoin, and ICO investors really understand that. Further, we know that it's equally important that we provide the same level of transparency and oversight that we show our equity investors. What we've done with our ICO is worked very closely with Wilson Sonsini, who's been our attorneys for years, to develop a SAFT, which as you know stands for a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, but that means that we are restricted from working with only accredited investors.

In addition to them understanding this whole notion of building an economy around this decentralized solution, we really think that there's some tremendous benefits for our investors that take part in the ICO. One of them is near term liquidity and furthermore the ability to actually manage their investment to liquidate or reinvest, depending on the power or the performance of the company. We see it as an opportunity for investors.

Amy Wan:

You're having a private sale for accredited investors only. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and did you consider offering it to nonaccredited investors by regulation crowdfunding?

Janine Terrano:

Yeah, we did and once we have our network live, we certainly, we will reconsider that, but we wanted to work with accredited investors only at this point because our network is in progress. We're building it out as we speak, so there's no immediate utility for the token, and I think based on the oversight by the SEC this is the more prudent and responsible path to take. That was the basis of our decision.

Amy Wan:

Got it. How much are you trying to raise in your ICO?

Janine Terrano:

We're trying to raise between 25 and 50 million. What we're building out is actually a network that provides this new level of data security, so we also want to be very engaged with the blockchain community. We see this decentralization opportunity as a means of really changing the dynamics of the internet and we're likening it to the burgeoning market of iPhone applications. We want to be that network that provides all the necessary tools through our APIs and libraries to really support third-party application developers, so that they can rapidly go to market, and do so in a way that has unmatched security, which we will provide.

Amy Wan:

Great. Tell us a little bit more about your token. What can users do with it?

Janine Terrano:

Great question. The token itself obviously will be used to conduct micro-payments, or micro-transactions. I think this is a really important point, because this is how we'll move software more towards a utility model. The nature of our network is that you can create this notion of micro-networks. For example, if you have a collection of documents that you want to share with colleagues, and let's say that they're 20 members that are part of this container, and you put maybe 10 or 15 different digital assets to share, that micro-network not only is created, but it also is managed by the members of that network.

The TopiaCoin will facilitate that. It will not only make payments to Topia for our solution, but it will also pay those members of the network for utilization of their resources. It really is a way to fuel that economy and also, importantly, it will allow anybody to use the TopiaCoin, so it can be a consumer, a small business, an enterprise, or a government entity. This way, you will do it based on that transaction that you need, and the TopiaCoin will facilitate it.

Amy Wan:

Very interesting. Your website states that TopiaCoin is for those who wish to share information securely and privately, without their data really being exploited by any sort of central or centralized authority. Does this mean nobody will be able to access someone's data unless they get permission and that no big brother will be able to see it?

Janine Terrano:

That's exactly right. Imagine truly having the capability of sharing a digital asset with only the people that you want to share that with. Think of it in terms of this, right now in the central authority infrastructure there's metadata that's exchanged, there's types of files that are known as that digital asset, traverses the wire, and all of this information is currently being aggregated, it's being analyzed. In some cases, it's being exploited. In other cases, it's not. It depends on who that central authority is, but by using TopiaCoin and the power of blockchain to really build out these decentralized systems, you're going to have a level of data security that prevents any central authority from exploiting your data. It really is a revolutionary new way to share information.

Amy Wan:

Very interesting. Are you going to be using a public blockchain, or are you creating your own?

Janine Terrano:

We're using a combination. We want to make sure that, again, no matter who uses the TopiaCoin network, that they can do so in a manner that they see fit. Again, going back to these micro-networks, each of those containers, if you will, will have an independent blockchain, so only the members of that micro-network will have access to that audited information. Now, in the context of an enterprise, we also have what's known as a reputable authority, which enables essentially an auditor to be part of that container as it moves and grows throughout, for example, a supply chain. Again, you don't have the notion of the old style central authority, but we still can provide the information and the necessary audit trail for an enterprise if they choose to have it.

Amy Wan:

Makes sense.

Janine Terrano:

Yeah.

Amy Wan:

Well, how are you planning to use the funds that you raise in your ICO?

Janine Terrano:

Well, we're very much aware of what you do once you raise capital. At Topia, we've had a series A and a series B equity round. We first and foremost need to build out the network and we're planning to release that in Q2 2019. We're also building out expertise around obviously blockchain, as well as additional data security experts. Also, the whole notion of building this economy and building out the community, that's brand new. It's a burgeoning market, if you will, so that requires additional investment. We're also very committed to the blockchain community. Again, we see our network as an opportunity for third-party solution providers that care about data security, to get to market in a very fast-paced way. We liken it, again, to the iPhone App Store. We also want to be very supportive of those third-party solution providers and assist them in harnessing those tools that we will provide so that they can utilize the benefits of the network.

Amy Wan:

What's been the hardest part in going about creating your ICO?

Janine Terrano:

Well, there's a couple. One of them is figuring out the market. I think there's ... Like any emerging market, there's a lot of misinformation. We were fortunate because we managed to find some really good partners, but the two areas that were of most concern to us were, first and foremost, establishing a method to protect our investors and provide that transparency. We worked, as I mentioned, with Wilson Sonsini to structure the ICO in a way that really does protect the investors, and also engage them, and make sure that they get the adequate information as we build out the network and the economy, etc.

The other aspect of this is that by virtue of blockchain, as you know, it's easy for folks to invest. We have this hard-line of we will only allow accredited investors, but we also have to pay attention to who those investors are. The AML KYC portion and the accreditation portion of this was critical to us. We found two very good partners in this. I will say that there's other folks out there that have a pretty aggressive appetite for compensation, so buyer beware. We work with IdentityMind and with Verify Investors, so we took two distinct expertise and we actually integrated those and made them part of our transaction process, and that's been working extremely well.

Amy Wan:

Cool. What are your future plans for TopiaCoin?

Janine Terrano:

Well, we're really excited about the blockchain community. As I mentioned, I think that blockchain married with our intellectual property around data security can change the very dynamics of the internet, and I think that we're going to see just an absolute huge increase in decentralized applications coming to market, and we want to be at the center of that. We really want to help those third-party solution providers get to that market fast, but also in a way that provides the highest level of data security, and we want to be at the center of that.

Amy Wan:

Very exciting.

Janine Terrano:

Yeah.

Amy Wan:

Janine Terrano, CEO with TopiaCoin. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Janine Terrano:

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Amy Wan:

You can find out more about TopiaCoin's ICO on their website, TopiaCoin.io.

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